Today in front of us we have the Red Magic 7. Red Magic was one of the gaming phones that survived
my durability test last year. There were a few gaming phones that didn't. And this year I'm
hoping this Red Magic 7 does survive. It has an internal RGB LED cooling fan and I want to see
how it handles today's sponsor Mech Arena. Mech Arena is a free tactical team based mobile game
that allows you to build and fight customizable mechs with a ton of upgradable weapons. Mech Arena
also just launched a pilot's feature which brings 12 new drivers into the game, adding a ton of new
strategies and tactics to the playing field. It's totally free to play. There are last man
standing rounds, capture the flag style rounds, and you can play by yourself or with friends.
There are dozens of mechs and plenty of weapons to build up a collection. Plus, personally,
I like that it's one of those games you can play for a few minutes or a few hours depending on how
much you want to upgrade your stuff. And, of course, it's free. Mech Arena has overhauled a
few maps and always has special events happening around holidays. If you use my personal link down
in the description, or scan this QR code you get a free steel reaper skin, 500 a-coins, and 70,000
credits which will really help kick start your own game. My username in the game is JerryRig, so if
you see me running around, play nice and remember it was me who got you all of that free coin.
Now it's time to see if this Red Magic 7 can survive my durability test.
Let's hope it does better than the OnePlus 10. Let's get started.
[Intro]
Personally, I'm a big fan of gaming phones. They are allowed to be a little more flashy
and usually have more top end specs than traditional non gaming phones.
And while they are designed for gamers and gaming, regular people can still appreciate all that extra
power. And everyone will notice the RGBs. Inside the box we get the phone, flexible rubber case,
and Nubia's 65 watt fast charger with a USB-C cable. We're off to a good start.
I also gotta say that this phone looks pretty awesome on the back. Red Magic has incorporated
a clear glass panel over the cooling fan so we can see it in action. Transparent tech is the
best tech. The clear panel also allows Nubia to highlight the other specs of the phone,
all written below the surface, giving it more of a 3-dimensional vibe. I'm a fan of the fan.
Red Magic has been doing the fan thing for a few years now
but this is the first time they've ever had dual intakes which is 35%
increased airflow over the singular vent from last year. And of course, not only do we have a clear
fan, but it's also backlit by RGB LEDs. The lights aren't super pronounced on my well-lit desktop,
but they're definitely there. I kind of wish they would rotate with the fan as it turns,
kind of like the fans on desktop gaming PCs. But maybe that's a feature they'll add next year.
Applying the flexible case I thought it was kind of dumb at first that the case blocked
all intake and vents for the fan, but it turns out that the case in in fact not designed wrong,
it just takes more than 3 brain cells to put it on correctly with the right side up.
And of course the clear case does work with the fan just fine, not obstructing anything. You can
see the RGB shining up through the fan vent. The phone does not have an official rating for obvious
reasons, but let's see how much of a breeze this little fan can generate. When maxed out the thing
spins at 20,000 rotations per minute. And while it's pretty quiet you can still definitely hear
that something's going on inside. It's strong enough to blow the little paper strips around
on my desk so it's definitely moving some major air over that processor and it'll be interesting
to see what that duck work looks like from the inside during the teardown video...or,
you know, if the phone snaps in half during this video, whichever comes first. And lucky
for the fan, it is unreachable with my tweezers from the side vent, otherwise we'd poke it.
Now for the scratch test. We've been performing these same series of tests on every major phone
that's come out for the past 7 years. So we have a baseline for how durable a mobile device needs
to be. It's nice of Red Magic to include a screen protector. We know that plastic scratches at level
2 or 3. Glass is a 5 or 6. And sapphire is a level 8 or 9. The centerline camera bump
on the back does allow the phone to rock back and forth during this process, and we find that
the Red Magic 7 starts scratching at a level 6, with deeper grooves at a level 7. Pretty normal.
The front 8 megapixel camera is tucked up into the top bezel along with the super thin
plastic earpiece. The earpiece is secure though and won't be falling off on its own.
The sides of the phone are made from metal. The capacitive triggers on each edge are scratchable.
Red Magic says these buttons are good for over 2 million touches and have an 8 millisecond response
time which is almost as fast as the display refreshes. So if your chicken dinner gets yeeted
by a Smurf, you can't go blaming the hardware. And your eyes also don't deceive you, there is indeed
a headphone jack at the top. And over on the left side we have a dedicated gaming mode button,
along with the fan intake and metal volume rocker. The bottom has our lower stereo speaker, 65 watt
USB-C port, and our dual SIM card tray with a red rubber ring. There is some water resistance.
The back of the phone, as we see, is covered with glass. The center strip has a metallic shine to
it and the rest of the glass slab is transparent so we can see through onto the designs under the
glass panel. The camera lenses are also covered by glass. The top is an 8 megapixel ultrawide and
then we have the 64 megapixel main sensor, and at the bottom we have a 2 megapixel macro camera,
all above a triangular single color LED flash. The rear intake for the air duct
is made from metal. I'm very curious to see how it all connects on the inside.
But one interesting feature that I haven't seen before is that the Red Magic has their fingerprint
scanner doing double duty as a heart rate monitor. I wonder if other phones could implement this as
well with a software update since it's a pretty cool feature. Coming back to the fans,
it's easy to tell what direction the air is going because of the way the vent sucks the flame from
my lighter inside the phone. Red Magic is saying that in addition to the fan there are nine layers
of heat dissipating material inside, which is, once again all the more reason to take it apart.
The screen is a 6.8 inch 1080p with a 165 hertz refresh rate and a 720 hertz touch sample rate,
meaning the phone can sense your touch before you can even see it on the screen. It also has a 10
bit AMOLED with 1 billion colors and lasts for about 25 seconds under the heat from my lighter
before the screen starts to burn white. And that mark does stay there permanently.
We'll test the fingerprint scanner real quick before the
bend test. Adding some level 7 deeper grooves after my print has been set,
and even with those extra abrasions on top, the optical reader is still surprisingly quick.
Normally my fingers don't have good luck with fingerprint readers. And speaking of luck,
for some reason phones aren't having good luck with my bend test this year. So fingers crossed
that the air channels inside of this Red Magic 7 don't make anything weaker inside.
Bending from the back with the fan full blast, we do get a slight flex but no cracking sounds
or other indications of failure. And flipping it around to the front again yields no
structural damage. The Red Magic has made a solid structural and very interesting phone for 2022.
It does survive my durability test meaning we can move forward to taking it apart for the teardown.
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